Spec is Frost Mage. My spell choices include the basic rotation of Frost bolt and glacial spike with Ice lance, flurries (instant only), mirrors of torment, frozen orb and blizzard thrown in with multiple enemies depending on the situation. I only use Icy veins and Time Warp during boss fights because I donât see the need for it on trash pulls. Covenant is Venthyr with Nadjia as my soulbind. In fights I am casting constantly except for when I am moving to avoid boss mechanics or tossing up an ice barrier or whatever the situation calls for.
My damage is okay for regular content but players in the raid were complaining so I got kicked. Iâd like some advice for increasing damage output if you have any advice to offer.
Thanks.
Clearly my armor choices are focused on intellect and critical strike. I crit quite often, but it doesnât seem to be enough to make my damage very high. Iâd appreciate some advice from other Frost Mages on how to increase my damage and where I might be lacking in my armor choices.
Youâd want to get the freezing wind leggo from last boss in CN, and change glacial spike to thermal void and lastly Theotar is the best soul bind for frost
Thermal void increases IV uptime by 10 secs and 1 second extra every time you crit while IV up, IP conduit decreases the cd of IV when you crit with FB, IL, Forb and flurry
Glacial spike tends to hit pretty hard on regular mobs but I can see the point youâre trying make where that might result in a dps loss in raids and dungeons.
Iâll give the usual reply of âplease post on your Mage, please post logs for analysisâ.
This will allow us to see your actual rotation, uptime, talents, gear etc.
Itâs pretty standard in forums for players to state like âI do the rotation perfectlyâ or âI donât move muchâ and then a look at the logs tells us otherwise. Your description of your rotation is limited and doesnât really give us much to go on. For example, are you doing the FB > Flurry > IL > IL? Are you using Orb/MoT at the same time and munching all your procs?
Which legendary are you running? Slick Ice is great on paper, but poor usage delivers low results. I tended to run the Freezing Winds piece on any fight that wasnât purely ST, and had no downtime (because you lose dps as soon as you canât sustain IV).
It should also be noted that ilvl makes a huge difference for Frost. When I was still playing retail our guild had another Frost Mage who was a good 15+ ilvl higher than me, and even with lower ilvl parses his damage was massively above mine. In your case 214 is pretty low even for Normal, and for Frost from my experience your damage scales up a lot once you hit that ~250 ilvl.
Thanks. Itâs helpful to know that iLvL does make such a big difference so that at least I have an excuse for my dps until I can raise that gear score. Thatâs a side question that I was wondering about is how much item level can impact dps. It helps to answer the question of âis this my faultâ or do I just need better armor. Your answer is appreciated.
It could be both to be honest. If youâre getting 90% ilvl parses then youâre doing things right and just need gear, but if youâre getting grey/green ilvl parses there are big things to fix. That said, the other Mage I raid with has often beaten my purple parses with greens due to being 15+ilvl above me.
Might be a little of both, but we canât know unless we see your mage.
I can tell you this advice:
Is spot on. Almost all Frost Mages currently raiding SoD would be taking Thermal Void instead. I havenât used Glacial Spike since early in BfA if I remember correctly. It just hasnât had the âumpfâ it once had.
Edit: In fact Ipallyâs build is almost identical to my Frost mageâs current build, and pretty much what most Frosties⢠are using according to Warcraft logs. The only difference is I use Frigid Winds in my build, though Ice Ward is still a solid pick, especially for trash pulls.
Its one of the metrics in a log which is basically a recording of a raids combat log put in a readable user interface. Parses are shorthand for some of the data that is in the general use information of the log. The % parses are compared to other players of the same specialization, in this case the % parse is how you compare to every frost mage who has done that fight in that difficulty. And the ilvl parse is your damage compared to other frost mages who have done the same fight same difficulty at the same general ilvl which is why its a better indicator of âam I doing it rightâ vs general % parses which can sometimes just tell you that you are under geared. % in this case being you did more damage then this % of this metric of players. There is an addon for recording and uploading them and its really common for at least one person in a any given raid to be doing so as its incredibly useful as a self improvement or just ego tool.
You might be able to find that raids logs on warcraftlogs, even if not its a decent place to see what people playing your spec can do at the upper limit and how they do it.
Beyond that I would throw a tip that for shadowlands there is an incredible amount of borrowed power that makes the rotation heavily focus on ice lance, and I wouldnât worry about wasting icy veins as its currently just designed to be up all the time as long as you have a target that you are blasting while its up.